Turkeys were a wonder of conservation. Now their numbers are declining.

When researchers began capturing female turkeys in the dense woods of southeastern Oklahoma and placing radio trackers, they hoped to learn how chickens successfully raised their young.

Two years after that study, there’s a complication: None of those 60 or so turkeys are known to have produced offspring that lived longer than a few weeks, a microcosm of a much larger problem.

Wild turkeys were a triumph of conservation in the 20th century. After the birds dwindled or disappeared from much of their ancestral range, decades of work helped restore healthy populations. As they multiplied, turkeys became a favorite target for hunters and a frequent sight along roadways, spreading beyond the countryside into suburbs, city parks and college campuses.

But over the past ten to fifteen years, wild turkey numbers have declined significantly in the South and Midwest. As it became clear that there were ongoing losses in many states, turkey enthusiasts became concerned, scientists began investigating, and some states restricted hunting. Just this year, Kansas and Mississippi suspended turkey hunting seasons, and Oklahoma lawmakers held a hearing on the decline.

“It took a decade or more for this to happen in multiple places where everyone was like, ‘Holy crap, what’s going on?’” said Colter Chitwood, a professor at Oklahoma State University who is leading the investigation into the decline of turkey in that state.

Turkeys, found only in North America, have long held a special place in the American imagination. Bulky, colorful and delicious, they became the centerpiece of a national holiday, an important sector of American agriculture and even the mascot of a few proud sports teams.

“If you look back at what’s been done to restore turkeys and establish wild turkeys, and where they are today, this was probably one of the greatest conservation success stories ever in the U.S.,” said Mark Hatfield, who has worked to quantify population trends as national director of conservation services at the National Wild Turkey Federation, a nonprofit organization focused on habitat conservation and hunter rights.

Wild turkeys are still more common than they were several decades ago. But the speed, scale and magnitude of the recent declines have raised alarms. It’s not quite time for existential panic yet, scientists say, but it is a confusing moment.

“Where are we today?” asked Mr. Hatfield. “I would say we are at a turning point.”

Counting wild turkeys (which are different from the farmed turkeys that end up on most Thanksgiving plates) is a bit like counting cars in downtown traffic: you can see the general trend line, but good luck getting an exact number. Researchers estimate that the population is down at least 30 percent from peak levels in several states, even as turkey numbers appear to be stable or growing elsewhere, including parts of the West and Northeast.

In Kansas, a state that became a destination for turkey hunters in the 1990s and 2000s, officials once received complaints about large numbers of turkeys causing damage to farmland. Now it is more common to hear concerns about the striking decline in turkey numbers.

That decline, about 60 percent in Kansas since 2007, has forced wildlife officials to reconsider long-held views about turkeys, said Kent Fricke, a small game biologist with the state’s Department of Wildlife and Parks.

“We just assumed that turkeys – because they are very generalist and very adaptable – would adapt or just find the conditions to have high production,” Mr Fricke said.

Pending research results that could provide answers, officials in Kansas have canceled the fall hunting season, reduced the number of turkeys hunters can shoot in the spring and placed limits on out-of-state hunting licenses.

The declines in Turkey have triggered a new wave of gobble research. Across the country — including in Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee — scientists are tracking turkeys, hoping to discover why they are declining and what could fix it. Even in states like Pennsylvania, where turkey numbers are relatively stable, state officials are studying their numbers and looking for lessons from other places.

“Because this is a passionate, passionate, multi-faceted group, we’ve really come together to try to increase the level of work that’s being done,” said Marcus Lashley, a wildlife ecologist and professor at the University of Florida who co- is the presenter of a podcast. , “Science of Wild Turkey,” which examines issues such as the relationship between hardwood forests and turkeys, the best cover for turkey breeding, and nest survival rates.

Despite the amount of work currently being done, there are few definitive answers about the declines so far. For now, theories abound. Many suspect that a reduction in the types of habitat conducive to turkey nesting could be causing the losses. Others investigate changes in predator habits, the role of diseases or the impact of extreme weather events that are becoming more common due to climate change. It is generally agreed that there is not just one reason, and that the details can vary from place to place.

“It’s a bit like death by 1,000 cuts,” said Andrew Little, a professor of landscape and habitat management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who studies turkey trends in that state, where the bird population has declined by about 45 percent since 2009. “There’s a lot of different things, and there’s a lot of different factors.”

Understanding these factors is difficult, painstaking work playing out in places like Idabel, Oklahoma, where two Oklahoma State graduate students piled into a heavy-duty pickup last weekend and began crisscrossing country roads where the scent of pine fills the air. kept hanging. . The students, Nicolle De Filippo and Cyrena Bedoian, worked with Dr. Chitwood on a turkey survey in wooded southeastern Oklahoma.

For two winters, Oklahoma researchers had tracked down female birds, captured them and hooked up radio transmitters to monitor their life cycle and their success in raising offspring, known as chicks. The researchers monitored the nest locations and some successful broods, but found that the chicks quickly perished.

Still, they kept coming back to monitor the turkeys’ movements, hoping to learn more as a new breeding season approached. If they came within a few hundred meters and picked up a radio signal, they could download important data without disturbing the animals. That information could help explain why turkey numbers are declining.

But on a hot summer morning, the winged subjects of their study did not cooperate.

“It’s definitely a mysterious bird,” Ms De Filippo said. “They never do what you expect of them.”

As the students plugged different frequencies into their radios, hoping to find turkeys, they were greeted with a static hum. While driving through a patch of woods, they thought they heard a faint beep, prompting them to get out of the truck and look for more beeps. No luck.

A few miles away, just across the Arkansas state line, on a road where angry dogs barked outside one of the few houses, they picked up the signal of another bird.

“Is that her again?” Mrs. Bedoian asked as they crawled along, their ears straining to catch a peep. “I think I know where she is,” Mrs. De Filippo replied as they focused on a tree line across a green meadow.

Soon the signal got stronger and the data started transferring. There was a turkey in the woods.